Mass Effect 3

And so it concludes, the epic galaxy spanning trilogy that is Mass Effect. It’s been a long, bumpy ride to get to this point with Commander Shepard seeing his (or her) share of political turmoil, failed subterfuge, friends and allies gathered and lost, and the bonds of friendship forged and nurtured. The game opens up with the Reapers swiftly descending upon an unwary Earth, cutting through cities with bright red lasers and indiscriminately killing hundreds of people in a matter of seconds. Where the first few moments grabs your attention by the ear and drags you kicking and screaming into the last entry of BioWare’s acclaimed series, the game slowly devolves due to hackneyed side quests, a pointless planetary search mechanic, and some truly abysmal writing and actor delivery. It languishes in gameplay that’s too slimmed down and a truncated crew that feels unlikable and disposable in turns. The graphics get a nice bump up in quality but the PlayStation 3 is slaughtered under the data load. The new streaming method bypasses an unnecessarily long installation process; you’re right into the game without having to make yourself lunch while your system sorts out where to dump a whole hot mess of stuff. Pop the disc into the drive and you’re ready to hop right into the game and start saving the known Milky Way from imminent doom. Instead of riding the wave that the second entry so exquisitely created, Mass Effect 3 starts out strong but rapidly dissolves. When I finally got to the absolute end I actually stopped caring about the game and that bitter taste made me look at the entire series differently. That should give you an idea about just how injurious this game winds up being, something so egregious that it nearly ruined one of the best video game franchises in recent history. Let’s break it down.

graphics

The game is still wrapped up in the expected sci-fi trappings we've all come to love. There are a few distinguished items to point out however. There are stellar looking lighting effects at work; the first two games certainly had their fair share of pretty lights but in Mass Effect 3 they’re outright exceptional. Lens flare is more visually dramatic with the overall blue tinged lighting of the Normandy being much more soothing than the harsh orange glimmer coating damn near everything prior. Skin textures also have gotten a bit of an upgrade with the overall appearance coming off as more natural than the largely plastic looking Shepard of yore. The cracks in the ancient feeling BioWare engine are displayed in cheesy animations and a crap-ton of glitches during conversations. During cut scenes or dialogue interactions characters can disappear, be facing the wrong direction, or have dropped mouth animations. If it happened once or twice I’d only make passing mention, but the amount of graphical anomalies throughout the game is alarming. The visual themes have remained almost unchanged. The Citadel still has those crisp, glittering white walls and the new planet locations show off some phenomenal set pieces while still appearing in line with established lore. Where the first game inspired something deep within my psyche by allowing me to explore the surface of distant planets, Mass Effect 3 plies the player with intricate scenery and grandiose structures. We’re also finally allowed to see the home planets of the different species we've come to recognize such as the Asari and Salarians. It’s a bit disappointing not being allowed to have at least one mission on every major and minor species’ native terrain, but what we’re given is enough to shed light on the architecture and habitat of the foremost Counsel races. Being able to see what the surface of Rannoch (the former home world of the enigmatic Quarians) looks like is surely deserving of inclusion in this final installment. Also, the Geth Consensus is another nifty place to experience; the way it’s constructed, as a shifting depository of data blocks, is awesome to experience. The environments are quite beautiful but they all lack that same exhilarating feeling that Mass Effect was able to pull off by allowing you to fully immerse yourself in the feeling that you’re a true explorer. An argument can be made in that Shepard has knowledge of almost all known locations but the game still decides to toss new planets at you that can’t be fully appreciated. Why give us free reign of piloting the Normandy when there’s no point in wholly doing so? The game still seems to have major frame rate issues though and no amount of pretty locations can cover that up. I was killed and forced to restart from the last check point more than once when the action on screen was brought to a screeching halt. Certain portions of the game run smooth as silk and the enhanced textures can be fully realized, but far too often the game would run like absolute garbage so it’s evident that BioWare still hadn't gotten the hang of optimizing for the PlayStation 3. Some obvious clipping and geometry errors will suck you right out of your captivation. Keeping Shepard at a full-tilt run shows just how hard the PlayStation 3 struggles to keep up with the graphics; texture load-in and decompression is painfully evident and the game had multiple crashes that required a hard reset. Cut scenes are, strangely, some of the most poorly performing parts of the game with dropped animations and a vomit-inducing frame rate. The aesthetic is exactly what we've come to expect from these games but the lazy optimization means you can never fully appreciate the graphics as your console chokes on them. More often than I’m comfortable to report, sometimes you won’t be able to enjoy the game at all when you have to reboot your system every hour or so.

Sound

The audio quality in Mass Effect 3 is still as delicious as in the previous two entries. The music is nicely composed and the dynamic combat refrain will get your blood pumping when warfare commences. The orchestral music is just as attractive and the soundtrack never overpowers the dialogue or the fantastic sounds of discharging ordinance. The sound of the guns in this game is simply enchanting! Shot guns sound like their ballistic rounds are capable of shredding organic material into mush. Sniper rifles have a satisfying deadly precision projectile that tears out of the barrel and assault rifles bellow as if they’re going to melt into slag. Even the special powers you and your squad mates unleash have a certain sonic aggressiveness that really conveys the power you wield. Combat is an auditory spectacle and it supplements the action perfectly. Outside of the theater of war the audio takes a hard left. Dialogue doesn't have the same polish as we've come to expect. Characters sometimes have wildly exaggerated reactions that make no sense to the situation and there are a few instances, especially towards the end of the game, where dialogue sound files seem to be missing entirely. A few times I noticed absent sound effects immediately breaking my immersion. Spoken lines are usually without pause between sentences leading to characters sounding like they forgot that periods and commas denote a rest; everyone sounds rushed which is exactly how this game comes off. There were also some extremely evident sync issues to top it off. The sound during combat is exceptional, but elsewhere you’ll notice a bunch of little issues that scar the game overall.

GamePLay

And now for the aspects of this game that nearly ruined the entire series for me. Generally speaking, Mass Effect 3 is a really fun game to play when you strip out everything except the combat. Shepard uses cover more effectively and moving around the battle field is less of a pain in the ass than it used to be. The same can’t be said for your squad when they happily stand in the line of fire seemingly on purpose. Even still, combat scenarios are tense and thrilling and exactly what they should be. Bump the difficulty up from normal and you’ll need to think on your toes and use every ability and weapon at your disposal to ensure you come out alive. Looking at the rest of the game is a totally different story however. You’re still allowed to cruise around solar systems but there are no planets to land on that aren't mission critical making the galaxy map more of a distraction than a fully functional tool. All you must do in a star system is deploy an area-of-effect sonar to scan the surroundings of the Normandy to find points of interest. Once the scanner picks up something Shepard must zoom in and use the super-streamlined planet scanner to find some treasure or other benefit. Drop a probe and magically you've released whatever it was from the clutches of the Reapers. It’s outright stupid, makes absolutely no sense to the game, and feels tacked on and shoddy. It’s great to not waste time scanning an entire planet or solar system for resources, but the presentation is just senseless. I would rather have fewer side missions that required actual input in order to acquire assets over this pointless mechanic. Obtaining side quests too is implemented in the most bizarre way. They're automatically added to the quest list after Shepard eavesdrops on a conversation. It makes the game feel more organic but it’s just sloppy in practice. It can be difficult to miss important information if you’re rushing to turn in an artifact and don’t stop dead in your tracks to listen to dialogue that may turn out to not provide anything anyway. I found myself freezing next to everyone I saw just to make sure I got any quest that may be floating around, though all this mostly did was waste a lot of time. If you talk to the recipient of whatever stuff you discover you’ll also find that those resources defy the laws of time as they’re immediately implemented in the war effort. Even the Crucible, a giant Prothean weapon that should eliminate the Reapers, appears to be constructed in a matter of days although the story never fully expresses the passage of time that it’s taken to complete. Something of that magnitude would take months or years to construct even with every available being in the galaxy working on it. Apparently the Reaper threat suddenly made teleportation possible. These issues, while minor, take the most believable and well-crafted video game universe and turn it into something ludicrous. Unless you’re really interested in each planet you come across there’s absolutely zero point in zooming in and reading the fact sheets that are loaded with typos. The bright sheen that peeks through is quickly tarnished by what feels like a rushed and substandard final product with glitches, lag, and crashes at every turn. The story is a bit of a stretch as the Reapers have descended on every inhabited planet killing millions of souls an hour while Shepard leisurely hops to and fro collecting war assets, keeping Cerberus at bay, and playing politician to a galaxy full of incompetent leaders. The DLC, which is shamefully necessary if you want answers to all your questions, must be installed and played through prior to the final mission in order for them to make sense. The DLC also comes complete with a shallowly handled living Prothean that adds surprisingly little value to the narrative! A little linearity and shedding off mechanics that worked in the previous games for specific reasons would have done this game’s story justice. Dump in some broken missions and it becomes a jumbled mess with stripped down gameplay two clicks above the bare basics. The RPG elements of the game are also clouded by a more overt emphasis on action. There’s still different armor sets to collect or buy and weapons can be upgraded with different modifications but, like with most other aspects of the game, it’s all either highly prescribed or superficial to the point of near meaninglessness. The character creator is still not quite powerful enough for my liking; I didn't spend much time fine tuning the look of my Shepard, as she still looked pretty much the same as when I left her in Mass Effect 2, but the few adjustments I did make still didn't get what I was shooting for. I wasn't expecting the caliber of such a tool found in games like The Elder Scrolls, but the lack of being able to make low-level changes creates a character with looks that aren't quite satisfactory.

The mission journal is nothing short of useless. Your quests aren't tracked; they’re either pending or completed. Without a way of keeping tabs on the steps needed to complete a quest you’ll be doing a lot of unneeded backtracking and blindly going through every open point on the galaxy map to find the one place you have to scan. It’s a really, really annoying thing to come to grips with, and when your quest log is overrun by an outrageously long list that’s excessively vague it’s often sheer luck in finding what you need. A few instances led to finding an artifact only to learn through a wiki that I had prematurely stumbled across something reserved for much later on, a sin that should never have been committed and should have been caught in testing. The lack of player feedback made me eventually stop caring about clearing out my quest log as I said “Eh, good enough. I’m done finding these rubbish assets. I just want to be finished with this game already!” And that’s what I walked away from this game with, a feeling of dissatisfaction and frustration as I wrestled with disparate game mechanics and a story that, at times, made no sense in the least. From a pure story telling perspective having Shepard end the century long faction wars is acceptable, but wouldn't everyone do that for themselves in the face of total annihilation? Shepard doesn't feel like a powerful soldier hell bent on destroying the most dangerous enemy in the galaxy and vindicating humanity; rather, he feels like a peace bringer for a bunch of whiny aliens who would risk eradication over putting their differences aside until the war is over. The conversation steps needed to put things in place is very black and white; you’re either the good guy or the bad guy with little room for moral dilemma. The game pretends that these decisions matter but, with the exception of a few notable sections, it winds up being nothing more than changing a few lines of dialogue for the same end result. Pop open the hood and you’ll see a hamster on a wheel, not a complex system of gears churning away. And then the ending, oh my GOD the ending of this game made me toss the controller aside (though it was almost at the TV) and walk away in disgust. I won’t give it away because you do, technically, owe it to yourself to see what I mean. If you've been carting your Shepard through all three games you’ll want to see this through to the bitter end. The ending just seems like a cheap cop out rather than some sort of explosive grand finale. Three quarters of the way through I stopped caring about the game in general, though the final fight to retake Earth rekindled a bit of life. Collecting every war asset has a negligible impact on the final cut scene so, after combing through every corner of the galaxy racking up what amounts to nothing more than vacant points, that work wasn't rewarded. The ending gives you some stupid slides showcasing your allies alive but doesn't offer up the slightest hint at what they've done in a narrowly saved galaxy. Even a slide show with some imposed text giving a few sentences about what your friends did with a new lease on life, a la Dragon Age: Origins, would have brought unconditional finality to the series. What you’re given instead is a few minutes of “WHAT THE FUCK!?” I was so disgusted that eighty hours of gameplay was reduced to something devoid of any sense of completeness, of validation I had made the right choice, that I shut my PlayStation 3 off and almost lost all faith in BioWare as a developer, very nearly making a pact to never purchase their products again.

Final Thoughts

Mass Effect 3 is a game that tears me heart in half. The solid framework of the combat can’t support the sometimes clunky controls, the vapid war asset mechanic, the uneven voice acting, the pointless planetary probe rescue, and the story that’s lifelessly written and poorly portrayed. When not in combat the game takes a massive downturn in quality that’s evident about halfway through the campaign. By the end you’ll probably have stopped caring about Shepard, the crew of the Normandy, and the fate of the galaxy. What start off as minor problems explode into a game ruining experience. I was not pleased with Mass Effect 3 at all; after taking Shepard through an entire trilogy I was saddened that it all amounted to a bunch of nothing. I cared so little that I headed to YouTube to watch the endings I could have gotten and each was less impressive than the last and this is with the extended cut installed on my first ever playthrough. The opening scene is massive and frantic, but as the game shoves you through the story it loses momentum. Ending the conflict between the Turians, Krogans, and Salarians doesn’t carry any sort of weight. Obtaining the assistance of the Asari, who strangely resist supporting the war effort for almost the entire game despite having the liquidity to afford early entry, feels unexciting. The only story thread that had anything worthwhile was being able finagle a way of getting the Geth and the Quarian to stop their fighting and work together in harmony. That was the only point in the game that I felt had any real impact on the story and the sense of that victory was exhilarating. This game should have had that feeling throughout but what you usually get is some more points added to your war asset screen that have absolutely no impact on anything. And without knowing what your comrades did as individuals after the war makes the ending utterly ineffective as you question why you worked so damn hard to keep them alive and form relationships with them. After experiencing a BioWare series from start to finish on a console I can safely say that I won’t be buying any more of their products unless it’s the PC version. BioWare really should stick to what they know, keeping their games on the PC unless they invest the time and effort to develop for consoles. The PlayStation 3 is more than powerful enough to handle this game and if a developer can’t do it right then they shouldn’t do it at all. Trying to get their titles into as many hands as possible has led to releasing poorly optimized ports. There’s no reason a company as large as BioWare, which I imagine has a room full of hundreds of metric tons of cold cash, should release such a buggy, glitchy mess like Mass Effect 3. For the sake of your sanity I recommend picking up this game, with all the DLC bundled in, on the PC for the most stable experience. You’re also afforded the ease of messing around in save files to fix the inevitable broken quests you’ll stumble upon but will probably figure out too far into the game to go back to a previous save. There is a multiplayer component but I didn't have the heart to try it out. The way it’s incorporated is elegant; take on the other fronts of the war that Shepard can’t attend to generate even more war asset points. I imagine it’s a fun diversion but certainly not an absolute necessity to the game overall. I would have rather that multiplayer be forgone in order to produce a better final product opposed to the lazy conclusion that was pumped out to store shelves. The overall feeling of the game is that something went wrong in development, like one department wasn't talking to another. The only major upgrade to the series is the more fluid and dynamic combat. All other areas of the game seem to have taken a heavy hit. While the game isn't all bad, the real meat is only contained in the first half of the game. The story starts off strong but quickly turns silly, the streamlined gameplay is refreshing but soon feels oversimplified, and the ship’s crew are interesting but eventually become cliché and boring save for EDI and Joker and the witty repartee between the two. Cameo appearances from the crew you were able to keep alive in Mass Effect 2 are great as you come across them, but once you realize they too just fall into the black hole of the war asset score they suddenly feel insignificant. And again that damn ending takes it all, slaps you in the face a few times, and leaves you upset and disgusted that you worked so hard to make everything right to have it all not matter anyway. It’s a disappointing way to end a series that I grew very fond of. If you've invested a lot of time and care into the Mass Effect universe, and your Shepard, you’re certainly going to have to play this game so you have some sort of finality. Just don’t expect to have eyes full of fireworks. If anything you’re going to have eyes full of tears as the return of the emotional investment is being withdrawn from an empty account. Much like the expected death of our universe, this game franchise goes out not with a bang but with a whimper.